Ethics & Programming Debate

This is a discussion on Ethics & Programming Debate within the A Brief History of Cprogramming.com forums, part of the Community Boards category; Topic: What are the responsibilities of a programmer, if you write a trojan, can you legitimately claim that it was ...

Ethics & Programming Debate

Topic: What are the responsibilities of a programmer, if you write a trojan, can you legitimately claim that it was for educational purposes? What about virii? When does programming turn from a white magic into a black one? Let's have a good discussion on this one.

i was screweing around with the 'system' command once, as i wanted to make a prog to clear my temorary internet files...but i forgot a '/' and it erased my whole windows directory...hah, it was fun watching windows go down the drain ...

one reason i don't want to do this professionally [pysch, even if i could... ] is because i innately do not want to have to go through red tape... even something which might not bother anyone else... ie coding standards... ........es me off to no end. it's a hobby, i feel the control... and eventually you'll see my art on e-bay... selling data, is that right? well anyhow... that's that...

I think you can write destructive code without being immoral. When you release it publicly, that's a different story. I think it's good to learn about that sort of thing ( and the only way to learn is try ) but please, set up a dummy system to test it on, not real people.
How about writing "safety" measures into corporate software? Like if you don't register this product or pay more for it, then it won't work. I understand the need to protect personal work and make money but I think that goes too far.
It's a very grey area but derseves thought every once in a while.

Presuambly McAfee and Symmantec employ people to write trojans and viruses in order to test their anti-virus and firewall products.
The real dilemma surely comes when these people realise they could "untracably" release a virus/trojan with the sole purpose to generate sales and increase shareholder value, just like in MI2, but with computers rather than people.

What do you count as "Military" software, I've maintained code which test components which we supply solely to a military customer, and I think I've managed not to commit treason by saying so and being vague about it. I've never felt bad about it, but mainly because I trust the customer.

I have no qualms with big companies protecting their investment at a reasonable rate/price. Some licence or subscription fees are extortionate however especially compared to the level of service you recieve in return.

Remember in all your software to put in disclaimers about limited liability in the case of death due to using your software, this aspect of law is very ill defined and blame can be entirely out upon individual programmers not companies.

What I mean is code which will be used for weapons. Consider a Tomahawk. This is a device who's entire reason for being is to deliver a warhead. It contains a lot of code, somebody wrote it. What do the people here think about the ethics of that?

Surely no one part is greater than the whole, the code I wrote\modified will still ultimately allow the 'successful?' delivery of a warhead.

When production is complete here and components shipped and are built into systems and vehicles which are used to blow things up and kill people I'm just as responsible as anyone else over the whole process.

But because I, and my Government, "know" the customer and their likely use of the technology I have no ethical problem for it, even if I worked for DERA, MOD or Qinetic, whoever and was explicitely writing the code to deliver the warhead.